Insightful look at era of the flapper

As part of this year's iD Dunedin Fashion week, Amy
Parsons-King attended a presentation on the Era of the
Flapper.

Today I attended a talk given by textile historian Margery
Blackman on couturian fashion of the 1920s and 30s, at the
Dunedin Art Gallery.

The events organiser, Lynda Cullen, gave a brief overview of
the dire state of the world at this time, including the
detrimental effects of WWI, the 1918 flu pandemic and the
crash of Wall Street, before Margery began her in-depth talk
on the clothing and textiles popular with the affluent of
this period.

A new era was blossoming, people were tired of being frugal
and fearful and the 1920s and 30s established a movement
toward fashion and frivolity, for those that could afford it.

Margery spoke about many aspects of fashion during these
decades, including the design, cut, techniques and fabrics
used. She referenced influential European artists and
designers such as Sonia Delaunay, and Raoul Dufy (whose art
featured on textiles) fashion designers Coco Chanel, the
Callot Soeurs and Madeleine Vionnet (who introduced the ‘bias
cut' to the fashion world)

Overall the talk was extremely insightful and revealed the
extraordinary craftsmanship involved in creating clothing and
textiles of the time. It made me consider the current
prevalence of cheap man-made fabrics and how fast and
disposable mainstream fashion has become compared to the
past.